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SCU Ranks High for “Return on Investment”

SCU’s undergraduate degree recipients rank in top 3 percent for "return on investment" and in the top 4 percent of earners at mid-career

A degree from Santa Clara University ranks as one of the best-returning college investments in the country, according to a new survey by PayScale, a compensation-data company based in Seattle.

Santa Clara University ranked in the top 3 percent in the survey—coming in 27th out of 1330 colleges or universities ranked by PayScale (some state schools were listed more than once to distinguish between in-state and out-of-state tuition rates). Among the 476 private, nonprofit institutions in the list, Santa Clara’s ROI ranked No. 17, (in the top 4 percent) and among 77 California schools, SCU was fifth (top 7 percent).

The survey ranked schools by their “20-Year Return on Investment,” meaning the additional salary over 20 years that a graduating student would earn above that of a high-school graduate, after subtracting the cost of the education itself.

At Santa Clara University, graduates were calculated to have a 20-year net ROI of $635,400. Grads reported having a typical starting salary after graduation of $53,300 and a mid-career salary of $110,000—which PayScale ranked 21st out of 583 institutions.

PayScale's data came from its 1.4 million website users, who self-report their salaries and their alma maters.

The company only included respondents whose highest degree is a bachelor’s degree, so lawyers, doctors, and other advanced-degree recipients were not part of the results. PayScale says its “confidence interval” for most schools is 90 percent at the median, plus or minus 5 percent (plus or minus 10 percent for elite/Ivy League schools).